Joseph Gessert

"To stop drinking bubble tea for the entire month, stop ordering takeout, and conduct a general audit of my plastics use, as well as build community awareness within the NYA volunteer dive team."

POINTS TOTAL

0 TODAY
0 THIS WEEK
1,016 TOTAL

participant impact

UP TO

11

pieces of plastic cutlery

not sent to the landfill
UP TO

32

plastic containers

not sent to the landfill
UP TO

2.0

public officials or leaders

contacted

Joseph's actions

Lifestyle

Travel Eating

If traveling, I will bring my own airplane snacks and eat at local restaurants to avoid take-out containers.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Community

Write Letters or Emails

I will write 1 letter(s) or email(s) per day to a public official or company to advocate for planet-friendly policies.

COMPLETED 2
DAILY ACTIONS

Personal Care

Lather Up

I will replace my soaps, shampoos, and conditions with either a bar or refillable option.

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Food

Use Reusables at Work

I will use reusable dishes and silverware when eating at work.

COMPLETED 11
DAILY ACTIONS

Personal Care

Pearly Whites

I will purchase toothpaste in an aluminum tube or in a glass jar or make my own!

COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION

Food

Use Reusable Utensils

I will keep 1 plastic cutlery out of the landfill per day by using my own reusable cutlery.

COMPLETED 11
DAILY ACTIONS

Food

Use Reusable Bags

I will not accept any disposable bags when making purchases, including produce bags.

COMPLETED 21
DAILY ACTIONS

Food

Minimize Packaging

I will purchase food items with the least amount of packaging.

COMPLETED 5
DAILY ACTIONS

Create Your Own Action

Host a Party with No Plastics

Hold a potluck with minimal plastics, especially in dishes, cutlery, and cups, and use this as an insidious anti-plastic propaganda opportunity.

COMPLETED 1
DAILY ACTION

Participant Feed

Reflection, encouragement, and relationship building are all important aspects of getting a new habit to stick.
Share thoughts, encourage others, and reinforce positive new habits on the Feed.

To get started, share “your why.” Why did you join the challenge and choose the actions you did?

Joseph Gessert 7/18/2019 8:16 PM

Animal dept volunteer party tmrw--eager to see if we can manage to avoid plastics in our potlucking, and how many casual plastics conversations we can manage!

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Joseph Gessert 7/13/2019 9:28 PM

Traveling was a setback, and I've realized that bodegas don't play well with no plastics. In general, I think to make this work we need to think more carefully about where we shop and what we're shopping for. Which takes effort. Presumably with some practice it will get easier. I'd like these forums to be more interactive--I feel like I'd like to have more back and forth with other people doing this to hear what challenges and solutions we're all encountering.

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- avra cohen 7/14/2019 8:02 AM
  
  Re:Bodegas: Recent visit to Puerto Rico, I was offered no bag on my first stop for supplies at a bodega. Knowing that the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria was still imposing shortages, I assumed they simply didn't have bags available. This situation repeated itself, until it dawned on me that plastic bags had recently been eliminated by legislation as an environmental effort to reduce plastic waste. Sometimes the heaviest luggage we carry are our cultural biases!
  
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REFLECTION QUESTION
Lifestyle Travel Eating

Was this action easy or difficult to do? How did it change your travel experience?

Joseph Gessert 7/08/2019 8:17 AM

Reducing waste while traveling remains difficult--seems like the main things are to pack ahead and not buy anything. Ironically, this was the first domestic flight in some time where they offered a free meal--in a lovely plastic box, of course.

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Joseph Gessert 7/02/2019 2:39 PM

No bubble tea for 36 hours. Vision blurry, muscles weak, palms sweaty. I've heard that the first 72 hours are the worst, but I'm not over the hump yet. Also, as we use up the remaining plastic-packaged items in the fridge, I am increasingly aware of the pervasiveness of plastics.

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REFLECTION QUESTION
Personal Care Lather Up

What are the economic and personal benefits of switching to bar soap/shampoo/conditioner or refillable bottle options?

Joseph Gessert 7/02/2019 2:25 PM

I'm still stuggling with this ordering-things-from-Amazon aspect. Trying to find these items locally makes me think that we may need to take occasional journies to the dreaded Whole Foods, or perhaps a natural foods store. They probably have some of this stuff, right?

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REFLECTION QUESTION
Personal Care Pearly Whites

Currently most of the packaging for toothpaste is plastic. How can you advocate for more alternatives through your purchasing power and influence in community?

Joseph Gessert 6/29/2019 3:29 AM

Nowhere in the neighborhood had this, so we ended up ordering this from Amazon. Which uses a bunch of packaging, and is carbon-inefficient on the shipping end, and has crappy labor practices. So maybe self-manufacture is the better bet. It's too easy for environmental responsibility to turn into just a slightly different consumerist opportunity, rather than genuine reduction, and it makes me wish there was a cheaper source for minimalist products, as they are generally premum products.

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- Jennifer Kepler 7/04/2019 4:04 AM
  
  In regards to toothpaste, I have switched over to the bite bits. They ship ground shipping only and in batches (they explain this on their website) to reduce footprint in that regard. Packaging is zero plastic and can be paper recycled. I have liked using this product and love the little glass jars (I reuse!). And for travel, it’s not a liquid, so zero restrictions!
  
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- Joseph Gessert 7/02/2019 2:37 PM
  
  Daniel, maybe we should establish a collections point at the aquarium. Sounds not totally unmanageable.
  
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- Daniel Bachteler 7/02/2019 5:16 AM
  
  Avoiding packaging altogether is certainly ideal, however, not always an option. Toothpaste tubes and their cartons are, due to the laminate structure, almost impossible to recycle. But only almost. TerraCycle and Colgate have created an oral care product recycling program (which unfortunately not very many people know about) that recycles/re-purposes the packaging: Check-out https://www.terracycle.com/en-US/brigades/colgate if you want your next tube/carton to have an after-life (and it doesn't have to be a Colgate product in order to be recycled)!
  
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REFLECTION QUESTION
Food Use Reusable Utensils

How can you be an advocate for using resusables instead of disposables for the rest of your community? Where are they currently dependent on disposable cutlery, and how can you convince them of the need for change?

Joseph Gessert 6/28/2019 5:27 PM

In the dive shack we use plastic or bamboo utensils for shared meals and lunches. We could thrift store source a silverware tray and supply, and convince one another that the washing up isn't too much of a chore.

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Joseph Gessert 6/25/2019 1:05 PM

This article about where our recycled plastic is going is good motivation for this challenge: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/21/us-plastic-recycling-landfills?CMP=share_btn_link

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